


Skin Debt

by LemmingDancer



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempted Sexual Assault, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Getting Together, Heavy Angst, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Dubious Consent, Neither of them have the kink, Panic Attacks, Past Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, That's how badly negotiated it is, Timeline What Timeline, Touch-Starved Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Under-negotiated Kink, Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg is So Done, implied/referenced past prostitution, transactional sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:36:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24670117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemmingDancer/pseuds/LemmingDancer
Summary: Geralt’s life was a series of transactions. His human heart and soul exchanged for a predator’s teeth and eyes, a monster head for too little coin, too much coin for tasteless gruel…an endless spiral of uneven trades and bad bargains, Geralt giving too much and receiving too little in return.Sex was just another transaction.Now, if only the bard would stick to the terms.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 279
Kudos: 1132
Collections: wiedźmin





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags, folks. The whole fic is written, will post daily-ish as I get chapters updated.
> 
> I finished this weeks ago but I've hesitated to post it because 1) it's darker than my usual stuff, and 2) it's a stretch canon-wise. Canon Geralt seems like a reasonably well-adjusted dude, at least as far as his sex life goes, but I can't help but think _he shouldn't be_. And so this was born...

Geralt’s life was a series of transactions. His human heart and soul exchanged for a predator’s teeth and eyes, a monster head for too little coin, too much coin for gruel…an endless spiral of uneven trades and bad bargains, Geralt giving too much and receiving too little in return.

Sex was just another transaction. At its very best, an exchange of physical needs met, but more often, double price for a night of impersonal pleasure from a dead-eyed stranger. And occasionally. Occasionally. It was worse.

Geralt had the vague idea it could be different, that it could mean more for humans. After all, he had heard Jaskier’s epic romantic ballads whether he wanted to or not. But he didn’t spend much time thinking about it.

After all, Geralt wasn’t human.

* * *

Geralt shoved his way into the inn, leaning hard on a door too swollen with moisture to fit its frame. It had been raining for five days, a heavy, soaking rain that ran down the back of his neck and made his armor chafe at every joint.

“There’ll be no food or drink for you here, Witcher. Not until the beasts are dead. Orders from the alderman.”

Ignoring the innkeeper, Geralt made his way to the fire. He sat with a squelch of wet leather on the bench closest to the blaze.

“No luck?” Jaskier asked as he joined Geralt. He was in his element, eyes glittering and cheeks flushed.

Geralt grunted. “Faring better?” he asked, tipping his head towards the rest of the room.

“A generous crowd,” Jaskier waved away the implied compliment with one fine-boned hand, but his face reddened even further. He pushed his ale across the table to Geralt. “You know, when I agreed to accompany you, I imagined that witchering involved more valiant fighting, and significantly less tromping around in the mud looking like a half-drowned cat.”

“Told you what to expect, you followed anyway.” Geralt shook off the distraction and got to the point. “Alderman is an idiot.”

“Yes, I gathered that. He is starving his potential savior, after all.”

Geralt rolled his eyes. “Not even sure there are monsters here. No den to the south.”

“And in the foothills to the west of town?”

Geralt blinked at him.

“I happen to have overheard the gentlemen at yon table discussing the unfortunate recent loss of their flock, shepherd and all. I believe you will find their homesteads to the west.”

“Hmm.”

“Just a thought,” Jaskier stood and bowed with a flourish. “My adoring public awaits.”

Of course, three soggy nights later, Geralt found a pack of wargs in the foothills to the west of town, just as Jaskier had suggested.

“See! That will teach you, to ignore me.” The bard fussed over his outfit for the evening performance as Geralt bathed away the last of the blood from the fight.

“If I listened to everything you said, I’d go insane.” Geralt folded himself further into the tub, wishing it was deep enough to hide his head under the water.

“Don’t be churlish; it doesn’t suit you.”

“Churlish.”

“Boorish, resentful, rude, childish…I could go on.”

“Don’t.”

“You know full well I was right!” The bard glared over his shoulder at Geralt for a heartbeat too long, then returned to fidgeting with the folds of his shirt.

The witcher hummed and relaxed into the water. Warm and fed at last, he almost missed Jaskier’s parting comment.

“You owe me one, witcher!” he declared as he swept out of the room.

Geralt’s nose twitched at the wave of scent that swirled in the bard’s wake, his usual rosin and chamomile underpinned with something new, something musky.

“Hmm.”

* * *

“Oh. This is bad. Very bad.” Jaskier narrated to no one in particular.

Geralt had been waist deep in yet another foul swamp, jabbing around at random with his silver sword, when the water grew teeth and clamped down on his arm. The darkness seethed, an enormous, many-legged creature rising to its full height with the witcher’s arm still clamped in its mouth.

It shook Geralt like a dog with a hare, all 200 pounds of muscle and leather snapping in the air, water flying. The audible pop broke the last straw for Jaskier, who scrambled out of hiding and launched himself into the fray armed with nothing more than, well…nothing. He was unarmed.

As Geralt would say, _Fuck._

“Drop him!” Jaskier yelled, skidding to a stop in the bloody mud before the creature. “Drop him this instant, you demon-born, eye-searing atrocity!”

He might have shaken his finger at it, he was never sure later.

To everyone’s surprise, probably the monster’s most of all, it dropped Geralt. Jaskier and the creature blinked at each other, and the bard could swear the thing shriveled a bit with embarrassment. Jaskier felt the perverse urge to apologize, but the witcher snatched up his fallen sword and lopped its head off before he got the chance.

“That was. Spectacular.” Jaskier said, and he wasn’t sure if he was referring to himself or Geralt, who moved like a marble statue dancing down from its pedestal, a whirlwind of scarred stone, an avalanche of violent beauty…yeah, the metaphors were getting away from him.

Geralt was attractive, that was the key point.

He was also…stripping? The witcher had dropped his sword, and he worked at the buckles on his armor one-handed, struggling with his equipment. Not that Jaskier was thinking about his equipment. Oh gods. Now he was.

“Uh. Geralt. What are you doing?”

Geralt gave Jaskier his, “What does it look like, stupid?” look, a complicated cocktail of raised eyebrows and twisted lips, then blinked and went still. His nostrils flared, like he scented danger on the wind.

“Yeah, not an actual answer, that. Bit weird, really.” Jaskier said. Weirdly attractive.

Geralt huffed and went back to his buckles. He grunted, barring his too-sharp teeth, and Jaskier remembered the pop that sent him scrambling into the battlefield in the first place.

“You’re hurt.” He stepped up to Geralt.

“Hardly,” the witcher replied, but the little lines carved around his mouth marked him as liar. “Shoulder’s out.”

Jaskier pushed the man’s hand out of the way and began to fumble with the unfamiliar buckles of his armor. And because he absolutely did not know how to shut up, he said, “It seems cruel, to take a man’s kinder emotions but leave him the pain.”

“I am not a man,” Geralt observed mildly, as if pointing out the sky was blue.

“Right. You just walk like one, talk like one, and hurt like one.”

“Pain is important. Tells us when something is wrong.”

“Hmm,” was all Jaskier could say, and what was even happening, that was Geralt’s line. But the witcher’s face was close, so close, and the bard couldn’t think beyond those golden eyes boring into his, the slit pupils visibly expanding and contracting as he stared at Jaskier.

Then the armor was off and Geralt moved, hitching his dangling arm above his head and pulling on the elbow. Jaskier’s stomach twisted.

“Wait, can I help?” he asked, trying to talk with a tongue suddenly grown too big for his mouth. He put his hand on Geralt’s back, feeling the muscles rippling under his shirt. Then the witcher’s whole body jolted as his shoulder thunked into place beneath Jaskier’s hand.

“Got it,” Geralt said. He had stopped moving completely.

“Great,” Jaskier responded. He stumbled away and fell to his knees, losing his lunch into the bushes.

“Are you…hurt?” Geralt asked when the bard finished. He was already back in his armor, sword across his back and monster head in hand, looking at Jaskier as if the bard had grown a second head.

Jaskier waved away the question. “Don’t try to distract me. You owe me for two now.”

A scowl.

“No, I won’t be put off.” Jaskier tried his super-effective finger waggle on the witcher. Perhaps it would be more impressive if he weren’t on his knees at the man’s feet. “Everyone knows a witcher who doesn’t honor his bargains doesn’t win many contracts.”

“Never asked for your help. Told you to stay out of the way.”

“A debt is a debt.” If Jaskier hadn’t intervened, Geralt would have lost an arm, and the bard was (he thought) understandably proud of doing the witcher such a service. Few could claim such a privilege.

Jaskier wobbled to his feet, catching himself on the pillar of muscle that was the witcher and clinging to his good shoulder.

And oh, this was a new scowl to add to the inventory and then hopefully never see again, a bitter, feral expression with too many teeth way too close to Jaskier’s face. It should probably have scared him, but his endlessly soft little heart only beat against his ribs faster.

The bard forced a chuckle and tried to give Geralt a friendly pat, but the witcher wrenched himself away, leaving Jaskier to paw at the air.

“You can pay me back later,” Jaskier said to Geralt’s broad back. Perhaps he’d get some actual details from the man about his next hunt, or even another chance to observe.

Jaskier didn’t see Geralt for weeks after that. Not too out of the ordinary, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had stepped in it, worse than usual.

He was playing to a sullen crowd in a two-street town in a dukedom he’d already forgotten the name of when he caught the glint of silver hair and golden eyes shining at him from a dark corner. He abandoned the song mid-verse.

“Geralt! How…”

“Your room and board at this inn,” the witcher said by way of greeting as Jaskier sat at his empty table. He looked meaningfully at the purse of coins in front of him, and then back at the bard.

“I…what?” And yeah, generally he could do better than that. But here sat Geralt, blood smeared across his nose, and greasy hair hanging down around a hollow face.

Geralt just stared, unblinking.

“What? No. That’s not necessary,” Jaskier said, even though it very much was, if he wanted to avoid the beating the innkeeper had promised him. He’d been eating and sleeping here on promises of larger crowds than he’d so far produced.

“A debt is a debt,” Geralt said, and oh, how those words fell like stones when the witcher was pushing coins across the table to Jaskier, looking like he hadn’t eaten or slept since they parted.

“Perhaps we can share a room?” Jaskier asked, because he suddenly knew all the stories about witchers who didn’t sleep, never tired, and couldn’t starve were absolute bullshit.

Geralt’s eyes flashed and then went dull. “It is not enough. You want. More.”

“What?” He knew other words, he was sure. Lots of other words. “No. That’s not what I...”

“What do you want.” Geralt’s rumbling voice rose, and several nearby patrons shifted their attention to him.

“Nothing! Well. I mean there’s a lot I wouldn’t turn down, elaborate dinners, well-aged wine, a soft bed, a willing companion, but…” he rambled to a stop as Geralt’s head jerked like he’d be struck. What in the spheres was going on here?

“Witcher! You owe this bard?” And the innkeeper had joined the conversation. Perfect.

“No, he doesn’t,” Jaskier said, hands fluttering uselessly in the air. “Everything is fine here, just a discussion between friends.”

“Those things don’t have friends,” a hulking man at a neighboring table interjected, spitting at Geralt’s feet.

Annnnd…yup, Geralt’s teeth put in an appearance as he snarled at everyone without discrimination. The rest of his body was doing two things at once, his shoulders collapsing in on themselves to make him appear smaller and less threatening, even as he shifted his weight in preparation for exploding off the bench.

“You’ll give the bard what he’s owed, animal,” the innkeeper said.

Jaskier put one hand on Geralt’s wrist, where his hands clenched around the coin purse, still pushed across the table towards the bard. He wanted to untangle this increasingly confusing misunderstanding, wanted to tell the idiot witcher he hadn’t been serious when he flippantly demanded payment, he was hardly ever serious, but there were actual idiots listening.

“Thank you, Geralt,” he declared in his richest, most sweeping tones. “Your debt to me is paid. Next time, we’ll negotiate more amicable terms.”

Geralt twitched, then jerked his hands out of Jaskier’s hold and shouldered his way out of the inn without a backwards glance.

This time, Jaskier didn’t see Geralt for nearly a year.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow y'all! Thanks so much for the comments and kudos! I was self-conscious about this fic, but you folks are incredibly reassuring. I hit 100k words on AO3 with chapter 1, and passing that milestone with so much enthusiastic support meant the world. Fandom life forever!

Geralt was warier of Jaskier after that, wary of owing the bard, or worse, being owed. He wanted nothing from the man, but he knew better than to hope the bard would extend him the same courtesy. Human courtesy didn’t extend to monsters.

They drifted together again eventually, despite Geralt’s best efforts, and then apart less dramatically than before, reuniting to fight monsters and occasionally men (Geralt), and to sing about it afterwards (Jaskier). They had been travelling together for a few weeks now, and even though he had somewhat adjusted to the bard’s intrusion on his solitude, Geralt had longed for the simple silence of a nighttime hunt.

So Jaskier was back at the inn, maybe asleep, and Geralt…Geralt was maybe dying.

Too many potions. His curatives smashed in the hunt. A stupid mistake, one he had survived before. Often enough to know dying would probably be easier.

Pain. Pain fizzling along his nerves, burning through his veins, exquisite pain crawling across his skin in every place it touched his clothes. All he had left was pain. The trials had taken everything else, and his life had heaped on the new hurts. He lay curled up on his side, his body a quivering coil of misery amongst the entrails of his kill.

“Geralt?”

Jaskier. And with his voice, a glimmer of not-pain that Geralt didn’t have a word for. The witcher risked a glance through one slitted eye and immediately regretted it as the soft, pre-dawn light drove another spike of pain into his brain. He made a wounded, animal sound and clenched himself smaller.

“Geralt!”

The bard’s hand on his shoulder hurt/didn’t hurt. He buried his face further in his own knees and freed one arm enough to clamp down on the man’s wrist, meaning to shove him away and instead pulling him closer.

“Shit. Fuck. Damn.”

_My lines,_ Geralt thought, though he couldn’t unclench his teeth enough to utter the words. He did loosen his hold on Jaskier’s wrist. He didn’t want to hurt him.

Jaskier dropped something at his side with a sound like glass exploding in Geralt’s ears.

“Geralt, I brought your spare potions. Which one can I give you?”

There only real way to end Geralt’s pain wasn’t in one of his vials.

“Don’t you dare curl up like a coward and die on me, witcher. Don’t you dare.”

Jaskier scooped one arm under Geralt’s shoulder, wedging him upright and wrapping both arms around him. He squeezed tightly, holding the witcher as if he could press the thousand shattered points of pain roiling under his scarred skin back into the shape of a man.

“Gods damn it, Geralt. Answer me.”

And gods help him, Geralt did. “White. Honey.”

“I don’t know what that means, so we’re going to go with the only white one in here and hope you witchers aren’t as perverse in your naming as you are in all your other practices.”

Jaskier pushed at Geralt’s forehead, forcing him to unwind. Even through his eyelids, the light made Geralt whimper until the bard clapped his hand over his eyes. A vial was pressed against his lips and he drank.

Geralt lost time then. He slept, he lost consciousness, he died…he didn’t know. It didn’t matter, because he woke up to sunlight on his face, uneven heat dappled across his skin. Jaskier was singing softly, so close his breath ruffled Geralt's hair.

Nothing hurt. And then he realized he owed the bard another debt.

And Jaskier didn’t want coin.

* * *

The sun had climbed well over the horizon before Jaskier was sure Geralt would live. The black veins carved into his face had finally receded and his heartbeat was ponderously slow and steady, now a visible pulse in the blue-white column of his neck. His skin had even regained a hint of warmth, though as usual, very little color.

Jaskier looked around them, at the scattered destruction and the gore glistening in the sunlight. He allowed himself a moment of disgust.

“Eew.”

He stood, hooking his hands under Geralt’s arms and pulling.

“You weigh a lot, Geralt. A whole lot. Not that I’m complaining per se. It’s probably good there’s so much of you, since the whole world seems to want to carve off a piece.”

Jaskier dragged the witcher away from the muck and into the clean meadow grass at the edge of the forest clearing. Sinking into a cross-legged seat, he pillowed Geralt’s head in his lap with the long line of the witcher’s body stretching away from him.

As he waited for the man to wake, he had the rare opportunity to study Geralt at close range.

“You are even more beautiful up close; do you know it? I suspect not.” Jaskier thumbed the jagged line of a scar cutting throw one dark brow. He tapped the thin skin beneath the witcher’s right eye.

“Especially these, in all their myriad, unnatural colors.”

His hand drifted lower, longing to trace the bow of Geralt’s mouth, but he withdrew.

“I’m sorry, I know you don’t like to be touched; you go stiff as board when I get within two paces. Sometimes though, I forget. I just want to sink into all this alabaster skin and make a home for myself.”

Jaskier brushed a strand of dirty hair away from Geralt’s face.

“It is really unfair, you know. No one should look this good when covered in monster guts.”

Geralt shifted in his sleep, settling a little further into Jaskier’s lap, and turning his face to the side to nose at the bard’s knee.

Jaskier immediately became aware of how close the crown of Geralt’s head was to his crotch.

“Ok. This is fine. Just platonically considering my friend’s unparalleled good looks while he recovers from a terrible, not-at-all-sexy fight.”

His traitorous groin stirred.

“Uh. Alright. So. I’m just going to…sing. Yes. That song I wrote about my Aunt Matilde, bless her, you’d need an abacus to count her chins.”

Jaskier sang, and most diligently did not think about Geralt stripping unabashedly before he climbed into a bath, of his rough hands closing around his sword hilt, of his broad shoulders rippling under Jaskier’s touch.

So consumed was he with failing to not think about Geralt, he didn’t notice the witcher’s weight going from pliable to frozen in his lap until he chanced to look down and find the man’s eyes wide in his too-pale face.

“Geralt!” And yes, his voice might have climbed an octave.

The witcher’s only response was a subtle flare of his nostrils, and Jaskier felt his cheeks heat. He didn’t know exactly what that expression meant, his mastery of Geralt’s language of silences and snarls was barely conversational, but this look generally proceeded Geralt disappearing.

“Are you well?” Jaskier asked as Geralt continued to do his best impression of granite.

One of Geralt’s shoulders twitched against Jaskier’s knee in a barely-there shrug.

“Okay. That’s good…you know what, no. That’s not enough. When I poured that potion down your throat, _you were dying_. I’m going to need more from you for that. Actual words would be a good start.”

“Mouth might be used for something other than words.”

Jaskier froze because Geralt, the white wolf of Rivia, could not have just said that. The witcher’s face was unreadable, blank as a page with no ink. Jaskier must have hallucinated the blatant proposition.

Then Geralt turned his lap. He rolled onto his side and nuzzled deeper into Jaskier’s crotch, rubbing his forehead against the bard’s inner thigh.

“Wow. Yeah, that feels amazing. Doesn’t answer my question, you are always coming up with new ways to avoid questions.”

Geralt growled, a rumble that vibrated through Jaskier and went straight to this cock. “What question?” he asked against the seam of Jaskier’s trousers.

“Uh…the question. Yes. Are you…” another subtle adjustment and the top of the witcher’s head ground against Jaskier in earnest. He promptly forgot what he was saying. 

“I’m alive, because you insist on helping, whether I want it or not.”

“You’re welcome? Or…thank you?”

“I’m going to.”

“What?”

Geralt rolled onto his hands and knees, put one enormous, surprisingly light hand on Jaskier’s hip and fingered the bard’s trouser drawstrings.

“Oh.” Jaskier managed.

One of the witcher’s heavy brows climbed in a question, and Jaskier traced it with the tips of his fingers before he remembered he shouldn’t. Geralt’s eye twitched, but the unspoken question remained on his face.

“Yes, gods yes. Whatever you’re asking.”

Geralt pushed hard on Jaskier’s chest and shoved him flat on his back. The other hand made quick work of the bard’s trousers, freeing him to the open air. He’d barely processed the change before Geralt took him in his mouth, enveloping him in wet heat.

“Melitele’s tits, that’s amazing. You’re amazing.”

Jaskier pushed himself up onto his elbows because he wanted this image burned into his memory. Geralt’s silvery head bobbing up and down, his hands tugging at and fondling Jaskier.

“Look at you, sweet gods. I’ve never seen such a sight.”

Geralt’s eyes darted up to Jaskier. He snarled with his lips still wrapped around Jaskier’s cock, and that flash of teeth against his skin nearly undid him.

“Teeth. Sweet heaven and burning hell. Oh, you’re a beautiful creature.”

A hand slammed into his chest, hard enough to bruise, knocking him back onto the grass.

“Stay down.” Geralt loomed over him, amber eyes flashing inches from Jaskier’s. “If you like all your parts where they are and unbloodied, stay down.”

Jaskier’s neglected cock twitched against his stomach and he rutted up shamelessly. “Oh, that shouldn’t be sexy. I know.”

Geralt’s lips twitched and then his face disappeared. A second later, Jaskier was engulfed again.

Jaskier kept the back of his head on the ground and struggled to keep his hips from bucking. Geralt set a brutal pace, sucking hard enough to bring Jaskier to the edge between pain and pleasure.

“So good, Geralt. You are so good, and you don’t even know it.”

Geralt growled and Jaskier lost control of his hips, thrusting into the witcher’s mouth. He felt Geralt gag before he pulled off.

“Sorry, sorry. I just-”

“Shut up. And get on with it.” Geralt dropped his mouth onto Jaskier’s cock again and very deliberately took his hands away from the bard’s hips.

Jaskier’s body moved before his brain even realized what Geralt had offered, bucking up into the witcher’s mouth, chasing his release in the back of the man’s throat.

Jaskier was on the edge, so close. “Please,” he begged.

Geralt tugged at his balls with roughened hands and Jaskier came, pulsing into Geralt’s mouth.

Jaskier drifted for a while, before reality settled like a weight on his chest. He opened his eyes and took in himself, trousers halfway down his thighs, softening cock glistening against his stomach.

Yeah, they really had just done that.

Geralt was on his back in the grass beside and slightly below Jaskier, with his hands behind his head so the tip of his elbow just touched the bard’s knee. Jaskier’s stomach swooped, making a valiant attempt to throw itself clean out of his body.

“Words fail me,” Jaskier said, because they had. Every single song, the tragic ballads, the mountains of poetry about love and loss he’d consumed, none of them had prepared him for this moment, for that tiny point Geralt’s elbow resting against him. It was beautiful. It was terrible.

“Hmm,” Geralt said.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOO! Buckle up, folks! Time to turn this angst up to 11. 
> 
> This chapter includes an attempted sexual assault. Please, respect yourself and turn around now if that is something that could be triggering for you.

Geralt scented Jaskier halfway through a griffin hunt. He scented him before the bandits, before the griffin even. Perhaps the bard had a particularly unique scent. That had to be why he identified it first, among the thousand smells drifting on the breeze. It wasn’t as if Geralt had spent the past few years with his nose up and his nostrils flared, sometimes searching for that wood and rosin sweetness, sometimes just enjoying it. He had not.

The bard was supposed to be half a kingdom away, entertaining lordlings for a season or two. He was not supposed to be here, his scent shot through with fear.

A dozen bandits had camped at the base of the griffin’s cliff. They had better equipment than most; in another time they might have been knights. Geralt should wait, picking them off one by one for as long as he could from in the shadows.

The leader rose and walked over to his tent, pausing to kick a bundle of clothes as he moved through the camp.

Geralt smelled Jaskier; Jaskier and fear and blood. He drew his sword and let himself be the instrument of murder they’d made him, a blade forged in pain and honed by decades of death.

When he came back to himself, the bandits were dead.

Butchered.

But Jaskier was alive. Geralt bent to untie him.

“Ok. That was…”

“Monstrous?” Geralt asked. His voice sounded strange to his own ears. It had been a rasp since the trials, broken by the mutations and his own screams, but now it sounded like steel grating across stone.

“What? No.” Jaskier winced, touching his own throat in sympathy. “Have you spoken at all since I saw you last? Even to Roach?”

It didn’t matter. Monsters don’t talk, after all.

Geralt shook himself. He had a griffin to fight in the cliffs above.

“Back to town,” he ordered the bard.

“Where are you going?” Jaskier wobbled to his feet. He did not leave.

“Griffin. Cliffs.” Geralt turned away and began to climb. “Town, bard. Go.”

Jaskier followed him instead. Because that was what Jaskier did.

“Like hell. A griffin! Sounds like a truly awe-inspiring battle. And dangerous, if the stories are even half true.”

“Yes. Go. Back. To. Town.” How had the bard survived on his own this long, with so little survival instinct?

“Danger adds the special sauce to the dish of my prose.”

Geralt rolled his eyes at the narrow track in front of him.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me.” Jaskier said from behind, scrambling on his hands and knees up the steep slope as Geralt climbed smoothly upwards. “Please Geralt, don’t deny me a chance to write my most epic ballad yet.”

Geralt snorted.

“You’d send me away, without even letting me try to pay you back.”

“What?” Geralt stopped on a wide ledge to look back at the bard.

“You saved my life.” Jaskier puffed. “If you die out here...”

“I might.”

Something flashed across Jaskier’s face, too quick for Geralt’s lizard-slow understanding of human emotion to process.

“You won’t die. You won’t.”

“Hmm.”

“All the same, when it’s my turn to have my sins tallied, I’ll have this debt to you as a black mark on my name.” Jaskier’s hand found Geralt’s calf, and the witcher froze, allowing the bard to use his body as a hand hold.

“No. Debt,” Geralt forced out. Jaskier climbed his way onto the ledge, his hands catching at Geralt’s belt, his armor. The witcher’s skin burned at every point of contact, even through his clothes.

“Well, good. Because I don’t have any coin. But I can think of another way to pay you back.” They stood eye to eye now, sharing air.

A wave of fear-stink hit Geralt like a blow, cutting through the confounding touches, the suggestive words.

It didn’t make sense. Geralt had paid Jaskier back with sex several times now, a hand job against the door of their room when the bard had convinced the innkeeper to let them stay, a blow job beside the fire after he had negotiated an absurdly profitable contract for Geralt, a few other times when the bard had made Geralt’s life more bearable. Jaskier seemed happy with their arrangement; the heavy musk of his arousal clung to the back of Geralt’s throat for hours afterwards. But now, as he reached for Geralt for the first time, all the witcher could smell was fear.

“No.” Geralt said with enough force to startle Jaskier back and dangerously close to the edge. Geralt had physical needs, in the darkest of the loneliest nights he might even admit to having wants, but a scared partner, a scared Jaskier…he wasn’t that kind of monster.

He wasn’t the monster the bard apparently thought he was.

“Oh.” Jaskier said. And nothing else. Which was bad. Why had Geralt ever enjoyed the bard’s silence?

“Stay here. Safe. Later, I will tell you about the fight.”

“Ok?” Jaskier brightened a bit, so maybe it would be ok. “Am I going to get actual details? Am I going to have to get you drunk to get them?”

“Details,” Geralt promised. “There is another hunt, a town over…”

“Less dangerous?”

“Dangerous enough…for sauce.”

“Perfect!” Jaskier plopped himself down on the ledge much in the same way he’d inserted himself into Geralt’s life: with a grin and no intention of leaving, no matter what the witcher might say.

* * *

Geralt came to, naked and tied to a table.

Not ideal. He knew some people liked it, but he assumed they had some say in the matter.

He did not. He was face down, bent in half with his legs hanging off the edge. His ankles were bound to the table legs, his arms shackled together and stretched up towards the other edge. He wiggled his fingers, trying to sign aard or igni, but nothing happened. Dimeritium shackles then.

Definitely not ideal. Flexing and shifting didn’t afford much movement, but there was no soreness, so at least they hadn’t done anything to him while he was out. Or maybe that was bad? Whoever’d taken him apparently preferred conscious suffering.

He’d probably had worse days. But this was top five.

Geralt sank himself deep into meditation. The kind of meditation he used to pass long nights on an empty stomach, days in solitary jail cells, weeks of loneliness. A body remained on the table, but it was not Geralt. He observed it from afar, and then didn’t observe anything at all.

Sounds and sights and sensations passed over him without rippling his surface for a long time. Sudden light in the darkness, hands on him, crying (?), a voice speaking. He did not know them.

The scent though. He knew that rosin and chamomile and fear scent. He didn’t like the fear part.

Geralt opened his eyes. “Hey,” he said to Jaskier.

Jaskier yelped. “H-Hey?”

Geralt twitched his lips at him. Then he frowned. “You ok?”

“Am I ok?! You are naked on a table in a dungeon!”

Turning his head, and delighting in the freedom to do so, Geralt glanced down his body. Jaskier had unshackled his hands and laid them more naturally at his sides, and his legs were free too. He was still sort of bent over the table, and unbending was really going to hurt, but his shirt had been draped over his ass, so hey. He was miles ahead of where he had been…whenever this had started.

“Hmm.”

“I didn’t want to move you, to hurt you, but I don’t know how much longer we have before the guard shift change.”

Yup, moving hurt. It did. Geralt pushed himself over and sat on the edge of the table anyway. Which at least didn’t hurt his ass, so double bonus.

“Bribed a guard?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah. With a knife. In his throat.” A bruise purpled one of Jaskier’s cheeks.

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

Geralt rolled his shoulders. That hurt too. Nothing for it really.

“Wanna go?” he asked Jaskier.

“Let’s.” The bard’s tone teetered on hysteric. “Can I help you?”

“Helped enough.” Geralt wobbled to his feet and brushed past Jaskier’s extended hand.

He was already going to be paying for this favor out the ass, and he knew it.

* * *

Jaskier was drunk. Not falling down, don’t know where you are, pissing in the closet because you think it’s a bathroom drunk. Just drunk enough that the image of Geralt naked and unconscious didn’t hurt quite so much. He wanted to be so much drunker, but he couldn’t afford to be, because Geralt was not ok.

There was the obvious poisoning and the less obvious but still debilitating dehydration, some serious bruising around his wrists that wouldn’t fade. Jaskier wasn’t much worried about any of that.

Geralt had spent the last two days staring at a bedroom wall.

He seemed fine for the entire ride to Oxenfurt, even with Jaskier sitting behind Roach’s saddle, clinging to the witcher’s waist and unavoidably plastered against him as they galloped through the dark. Then they arrived at Jaskier’s rooms, to safety.

“They aren’t much, I know,” Jaskier said. “Bathroom’s through here, only one bedroom, but I can sleep on the floor.”

“Why.”

“Uhm.”

“It’s your bed. Floor’s fine.”

“No, nuh-uh, no way, not happening. You’re hurt.”

“Barely—”

“Right. Barely. That’s hurt enough.”

“Looks like a big bed.”

It was a _very_ large bed. One did not get a reputation for greatness in the bedroom working on a narrow cot. Which was absolutely not a thought he should be having right now.

Geralt was watching him. Nothing new there. Just particularly disconcerting as Jaskier tried to work out how to tell the man he wasn’t going to re-traumatize him, without inevitably pointing out that Geralt was traumatized at all, which he did not seem to know.

“I’m fine.”

“I know, barely hurt—”

“No. Well, yes. But. They didn’t fuck me.”

“Sweet Melitele and all the gods above.”

Geralt’s head tilted to the side as he tried to interpret that, and you know, Jaskier didn’t know what he meant either. Just some general exclamation of horror at the very thought, probably.

“I mean,” Jaskier said, “I’m glad. I’m glad they didn’t hurt you that way.”

“Hmm.” Geralt nodded once, dumped his saddlebags by the door, and stripped before Jaskier could even properly light the candles.

Then Geralt lay down on the bed, scooted closer to the wall, rolled over to face it, and didn’t move for two days.

Jaskier lingered around the room for as long as he could. He sorted his correspondence, ate, drank, tidied, mended, composed, and talked endlessly to the still figure on the bed. He even managed to snatch a few hours of restless sleep stretched out next to the witcher. And then he just couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t deal with the witcher laying there so vulnerable, and so damn naked, in his bed. It wasn’t right for him to want the man this way, especially not now. So he went to seek the counsel of the wisest woman he knew.

“Maybe he’s really fine,” the bartender at the Pint & Cork said. “Have another drink.”

“People who are fine don’t stare at walls for days,” he said, but he took the drink. And a few more after that. So yes, Jaskier was drunk.

That was going to be his excuse later.

Jaskier managed to get the door to his rooms open, he only missed the keyhole a few times, and entered with as little noise as possible. He did a lot of complicated acrobatics to undress quietly. He avoided looking at Geralt because he just. Couldn’t look at Geralt.

Then he climbed into bed next to the witcher and lay still on his back. Geralt was breathing deep and even, the same way he’d been breathing for days. Jaskier turned his face to look at him. Because he couldn’t _not_ look at Geralt.

Geralt had moved.

He lay on his back, chest bare and sheets just covering his hips, his skin glowing blue-white in the moonlight streaming in the window behind the bed.

It took Jaskier’s breath away. He need only reach out, just a twitch of his hand really, and he could pet those glorious muscles. That sounded so, so good. But better yet, a little bit of wiggling, and he could rest his head on one of those broad shoulders and hear the heartbeat of the man he loved beneath.

The man. He loved.

Gods, he was so screwed. He had known it for a while now, but this was the first time he’d been drunk enough to admit it to himself. He loved Geralt, his best friend and a witcher, who didn’t love him and quite possibly couldn’t.

Geralt, who was looking at him with eyes that glowed a bit in the dark.

“Uhm,” Jaskier choked. His heart was in his throat.

The witcher rolled over onto his side to face Jaskier. His hand moved towards the bard, slowly, so slowly, and Jaskier knew he was trying not to scare him, a tiny gesture of tenderness that made his chest tighten. The witcher’s arm landed across the tops of his thighs, his hand resting on Jaskier’s hip.

“I owe you,” Geralt said, voice a thigh-clenchingly deep rumble.

Jaskier was concentrating so hard on the weight of the hand on his hip, he barely heard. “I guess? Not really, I mean. That’s what we do, right? You save me, sometimes I save you, and then…”

“I pay you back.” Geralt’s fingers dipped under Jaskier’s waistband, rough pads of his fingers brushing across tender skin.

“Oh gods yes. We do this sometimes, don’t we?” Jaskier was weak, and he was wanting.

Jaskier would take whatever Geralt would give.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the comments and kudos! I reworked the final chapter based on your feedback, so know your comments make the fic better. 
> 
> This chapter is the one I was most worried about, so let's, uh, turn it up to 12? Seriously, we're earning our rating and tags in this chapter, folks. **Trigger warning for technically consensual but very uncomfortable, poorly negotiated sex ahead.**

Jaskier’s breath whistled out in a huff and his stomach swooped as Geralt pulled off his smalls in one efficient movement. The witcher palmed him and stroked Jaskier to full hardness.

It was everything Jaskier had wanted, for days, for weeks. His heart had taken up residence in his throat, a lump he could barely swallow around, let alone speak around. But this was Geralt, who Jaskier had found naked and chained, who had spent days staring at a wall, who _he loved._ Jaskier caught his wrist.

“Wait, love,” damn it, “We don’t have to do this now.”

Geralt scowled at him. “I don’t want to put it off.”

Which was a weird way to say that. “What does that even mean?”

“We do this now.”

“Listen, I know what those men tried to do, and—”

“I told you they didn’t fuck me. I’m clean.”

Jaskier’s heart was now headed the opposite direction, getting tangled up with his clenching stomach. “That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried about how they made you feel.”

Geralt drew back enough to look at Jaskier like he’d been replaced by a doppelganger. “I don’t understand. I’m a witcher. Feelings aren’t a factor.”

“Right,” Jaskier sighed. “Just. Are you sure about this?”

Geralt stroked Jaskier very deliberately, one eyebrow cocked at him in a challenge. “You don’t want me?”

Jaskier arched. “I want you.”

Gods, how he wanted. Jaskier’s hand came up to land on Geralt’s cheek. He brushed his thumb across one sharp cheekbone, then that bow of a mouth that had tempted him for years. The witcher huffed a breath of air that tickled Jaskier’s face but didn’t move away from the touch.

“My mouth enough?”

“Never,” Jaskier said, putting all the feelings he could not say into the word. They could stay in bed discovering each other for the rest of Jaskier’s life, and it would never be enough. "I adore so much more than your mouth."

Geralt froze and the bard cursed himself. He knew better than try and trap the witcher with talk about feelings.

The witcher rolled away from Jaskier, and he was sure he’d messed it up, he was never going to see the man he loved again let alone have sex with him, then Geralt pressed back, grinding his ass obscenely against Jaskier’s crotch.

“Oh sweetness, you’re so beautiful, so good like this,” Jaskier said. He draped one arm around the witcher and pressed a palm to his belly before he realized what he was doing.

A dizzying wave of fear swept through Jaskier, stealing his breath. He’d forgotten, he hadn’t even asked if he could touch.

Geralt stuttered to a stop against him.

“Can I hold you?” Jaskier asked, too late.

“Why.”

And what the hell kind of question was that? Jaskier searched his lust and alcohol addled brain for an explanation of the basic human need to touch and came up empty. Witchers apparently didn’t understand, and gods, what if he scared Geralt off with his clinginess?

“I just want to,” he tried. Sweet Melitele, he was an idiot.

The muscles in Geralt’s stomach quivered under Jaskier’s increasingly sweaty hand. “Can’t you just fuck me.”

Oh that was hot. Not sweet and loving like Jaskier desperately wanted to be, but he hadn’t debauched his way across the continent without encountering lovers who couldn’t accept affection unless it was well disguised as something harsher. It kind of made sense that the witcher, who so seldom received any kindness at all, was one of them.

“On your hands and knees, then.” Jaskier said in an entirely different tone.

The witcher climbed to his hands and knees in the middle of the bed. His head was bowed and Jaskier couldn’t see his face, but at least he’d stopped shaking. Jaskier had to grip himself hard at the sight of him on all fours, waiting for the bard’s touch. He was lucky a certain countess had been a controlling lover. Jaskier had enjoyed submitting to her, and he knew enough about this kind of play to take on the other role, if he must. And hey, he got to touch Geralt. 

“This is what you need?” he asked as he got his knees behind Geralt. He kneaded the meat of one ass cheek none-too-gently. “Someone to tell you how you were made to be fucked, someone to take control and bend you in half?”

A long silence, long enough that Jaskier began to panic. Then, “Do you need a fucking written invitation.”

Jaskier could do this, if this was what Geralt needed. After all, he loved the man.

Gods he was so screwed.

* * *

Geralt waited for Jaskier to fuck him.

It was worse than all the waiting before, lying in bed for days, naked and on edge, the bard always around, never leaving him for more than a moment, but not taking what he wanted. Geralt could smell the lust on him almost constantly, but he never tried anything. It didn’t make any fucking sense that the bard was afraid to reach for him but was so quick to react when Geralt made the first move. Who trusted a witcher to touch them, but was scared to touch back? Did he think Geralt was going to go rabid at the first blush of pleasure?

But the bard had him the way he wanted him now; Geralt's pleasure wouldn't be an issue. He could smell nothing but lust pouring off the man behind him as he knelt like a dog on the bed.

Fine, this was fine. Geralt had been here before and at least now he was prepared. Just a quick fuck and they were even. Geralt needed them to be even again.

“Get on with it,” he ground out.

Hands between his thighs, pushing them apart. Geralt shuddered involuntarily. This was Jaskier, the bard wouldn’t hurt him, not really.

“What’s this? Did you prepare for me?” The bard touched him, a finger pressing in, sliding in the oil Geralt had used.

The bard’s movements paused. “I asked you a question, whore.”

Geralt twitched at the word. He was, wasn’t he? He’d always ignored it when others called him a whore, even when they were balls deep in him, because humans were full of bad words for people they didn’t like, but this was Jaskier.

Jaskier pinched his ass cheek and Geralt jolted away from his hand. “Did you prepare for me?”

“Yes,” Geralt said, forcing himself to be still. The pinch had barely hurt, just surprised him.

“You really do want this, huh.” The bard suddenly sticking two fingers in him was even more surprising than the pinch. Geralt gasped and forced himself to breathe, to meditate away so his muscles would relax into it.

“You didn’t do a very good job,” Jaskier said, and his voice was different. More like himself, maybe? Geralt couldn’t concentrate with the man’s digits wiggling inside him.

“ ‘m a witcher,” Geralt said. “Can’t hurt me that way.” It wasn’t true, but he would heal fast, wouldn’t get infected. At this point he’d say anything to get this over with faster. He thrust back onto Jaskier’s fingers, ignoring the burning at the base of his spine, the pain that twisted up his torso.

Jaskier’s free hand gripping him by the hip stopped him. The bard reached around him, startling him with a hand on his chest, pinching his nipples and driving him to sit up on his knees. Jaskier grabbed Geralt’s dick where it sat half-hard and heavy on his lap and stroked it. Trapped between the bard’s hand and his fingers, Geralt could only shudder.

“You aren’t even hard,” Jaskier said, and that voice was entirely normal. That was his normal, I’m-confused-and-slightly-scared voice.

“Slow heartbeat,” Geralt said, which was true. The pain also made it difficult to get hard, but he doubted the bard would want to hear that. He was weird about things like that. As if it mattered with Geralt. 

“I know you’re sterile, can you even get hard?” Jaskier asked. He stroked Geralt a few times, his grip firm. Geralt couldn’t contain his whimper. It was too much, too harsh; he'd been oversensitive since the trials.

“Please,” he said, and he was begging now, like the whore he was. “Just fuck me.”

“You like that, even if you can’t get hard? Alright.” Jaskier dropped Geralt and shoved him back onto his forearms so fast Geralt’s head spun.

The fingers disappeared for a blessed moment, but then Jaskier’s dick pressed against him, wide and flaring, so much wider than his fingers.

It hurt, in a deep inside, hurting something witcher mutations couldn't heal way. It didn’t make sense, it shouldn’t hurt so much, Jaskier moved with agonizing slowness, driving inside in a series of tiny rolls of his hips. One of them grunted with every thrust and it took Geralt too long to realize it was him.

“So hot, so tight for me.” Jaskier said when his hips finally hit Geralt’s. “Do you like that, whore?”

Geralt shuddered. He didn’t understand. Why did Jaskier care about how Geralt felt, if they both knew he was just using Geralt’s body?

“Geralt?”

“Just. Get. On. With it.”

Jaskier got on with it. Pulling almost all the way out, he drove back in hard enough to scrape Geralt’s face across the sheets. He set a quick pace, snapping his hips, the room filling with the sound of slapping skin.

Geralt could finally float away. He let his body do what it must, surrendered to the rhythm of the fight, and drifted.

He was dimly aware of Jaskier talking constantly, a string of filth, and then, “Geralt, I’m not sure where you are on this, but…I’m…sweet Melitele…just a man. I can’t hold out much longer.”

“Then finish.” _Please, any god who is listening, just let him finish._

Jaskier thrust a few more times and then stuttered and groaned. For entirely too long, he pressed into Geralt, their hips welded together as he pulsed in the witcher. Then he slid out with a disgusting slurp and flopped down on his side.

Geralt didn’t know what to do with himself. He was still kneeling on the bed and trying to decide when Jaskier’s hand on his shoulder made him jerk.

“You want to clean up?”

That sounded like a good idea. Geralt wobbled to the edge of the bed, got up, and headed to the bathroom, trying not to limp.

When he returned, finally dressed in an undershirt and smalls, the bed had clean sheets and Jaskier was pacing back and forth in front of it.

“That was enough for you?” Jaskier asked. “I mean, you didn’t…”

Geralt frowned at him. “Was it for you?”

“Of course! That was wonderful. I could write a round of ballads on the curve of your ass, on the feel of your body clenched around me.”

Geralt blanched.

“I won’t! I mean, obviously, I would never do that. I just…Geralt? You ok? When I’ve done this before, there’s always a part after, you know, where you make sure your partner is good, that they know they did well…”

“So I can stay?” He shouldn’t want that, he should get out while they were even, he’d have to walk Roach for a day or so instead of riding, but at least he’d be out of this confusing arrangement for good.

“What? Of course you can stay!”

And he should limp away as fast as he could, he should, but Geralt found himself climbing back into bed with Jaskier instead. They lay on their sides facing each other, hands bare inches apart, and the bard told him stories about his university days and slipped in little compliments about Geralt between them. He wasn’t sure about the weird split personality Jaskier had during sex, but this man, with his sparkling eyes and his kind words whispered like secrets, this man he loved.

He loved. Jaskier.

Gods, Geralt was so screwed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your comments and kudos, especially on that last chapter. It was a tough one in every conceivable way. So. Yeah. Thanks. 
> 
> And now, Jaskier gets a little help from a frenemy.

Jaskier had long resigned himself to loving a witcher, someone who could not love him back, who could only accept affection from him in the form of pain.

Unrequited love was satisfactorily tragic, so it had that going for it at least. And though long exposure to the witcher had shown Jaskier that Geralt did in fact feel, that he suffered under the emotional abuse of a cruel world as much or more than he did under blade or claw, Jaskier had never seen him love the way humans loved, wholly and without sense or reservation.

Until Yennefer. Because Geralt loved Yennefer, in the all-consuming, throw-caution-to-the-wind sort of way all the love songs went on about.

It was just Jaskier that Geralt didn’t care about.

“How did you do it? How did you make him love you?”

“Oh bard. It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.”

Geralt and Jaskier had run into Yennefer yet again. Now Geralt was out killing…something…and Jaskier was drowning his sorrows in the filthiest, smelliest tavern on the continent. Neither the food nor the crowd had deterred Yennefer from joining him, and mocking him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jaskier sputtered at Yennefer. “He loves you.”

“He wants me, I want him.”

“Exactly!”

“It’s not the same. What has sex got to do with love?”

“Uhm. Everything?”

“I swear, only men are privileged enough to hold such a view. Have you loved every pompous ass and preening princess you fell into bed with?”

“Yes!”

“The way you love Geralt?”

“Well, at least a little.” He swallowed hard. “No. Not at all the way I-the way I love Geralt.” It hurt to say aloud.

Yennefer raised her glass in a mocking salute.

“Fine then. But honestly, what you have with him, love or not, I would take it and be glad for it.”

“The sex? Have I not seen him with his hands down your trousers on more than one occasion?”

“There’s no lingering together the next morning, no _intimacy_. He doesn’t want me to touch him.” That was the worst part. Every time Jaskier took his courage in hand, the witcher shrugged him off with a snarl or was so painfully, obviously disinterested that Jaskier’s own passion withered. He was terrified he’d ruin what he did have with Geralt, even though, “It’s always ‘Harder Jaskier, just get on with it’ and ‘Just fuck me, I want to sleep.’”

Yennefer choked on her drink and set it down. She looked into Jaskier’s eyes, pinning him like a bug with her violet ones, staring silently for entirely too long.

“He lets you fuck him.” It wasn’t a question, but her tone was stunned disbelief.

Jaskier choked on his drink. “How does he tolerate you, with these creepy invasive mind powers.”

“He’s harder to read than you are. Unfortunate for all of us, I think.”

“I take it he doesn’t bend over for your cock?” That was nasty of him and Jaskier knew it. He almost felt bad…no, scratch that. He was gloating.

“That’s not part of our arrangement.”

“What, you have like a contract?”

“We offer each other pleasure and comfort we don’t find elsewhere.”

“That’s a relationship. You are describing a relationship, Yennefer.”

“Then mine is going better than yours, and that should fucking scare you, Jaskier.”

Jaskier sputtered incoherently.

“You think he enjoys that?” Yennefer gestured at Jaskier’s head.

Jaskier reached up and covered his forehead, like that would keep her from flipping through his memories. “He initiates it! Sometimes violently!”

“I know I’m in danger of repeating myself here, but it’s not the same.”

“Why would he do it then?”

“Jaskier, and this really shouldn’t be news to you, he’s not human.”

“Bullshit, and you of all people should know it.”

“He doesn’t believe himself to be human, then. He has not experienced the world the way you, or even I, have lived it.”

“So?”

“He’s a hunter, a predator. An outsider.” She held up one hand to forestall the bard’s objection. “It’s not the only thing he is, of course. As you say, he’s very much a person, who loves his horse and the sky at midnight, and has an almost shameful relationship with those little pastries they sell at fall harvest fairs.”

The tightness in Jaskier’s chest was stealing his breath. “Speak plainly.”

“Geralt abhors violent sex. He is passionate and spontaneous. But he is not violent. I know, I like a bit of pain with my pleasure and it was like pulling teeth to get him to use his. I swear, he even enjoys the skin-to-skin, post-coital come down as much as the act.”

“Pfft.” Jaskier had been having rough sex with Geralt on and off for years, since almost the beginning. But of course he treated Yennefer like she was made of glass, even when he was getting cut on all her broken edges.

Yennefer’s violet eyes were pitying. “I’m sure it’s easier not to believe me. But think, bard. What predator, who has been hunting and hunted as a monster for over a century, would enjoy being fucked like an animal?”

Jaskier tasted bile. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He gets on his hands and knees, turns his vulnerable back to you and submits to having his ass used? Does he get off on it?”

“Shut up,” Jaskier rasped. If she kept talking, he was going to be sick. “It’s not like that. He doesn’t have to do any of it, he’s a godsdamned witcher. I have no power over him.”

“None?”

Jaskier opened his mouth and then shut it. Everything had been different and so much worse since the dragon hunt. The bard had expected to never see Geralt again, but the witcher found him not a week later by breaking into his room at an inn, stuttering out a not-quite-apology, and then tackling Jaskier to the bed. And Jaskier, angry, hurt, but still absurdly grateful to have anything at all with Geralt, had sex with the witcher the only way he was allowed, hard and unaffectionate, whispering degrading filth into the man’s ear and wasting little time on foreplay. They’d had sex that way almost every night since, Jaskier carving a tiny piece of intimacy out of Geralt’s skin.

He forced himself to scoff. “Come on. Why would he do…that…if he didn’t want to?”

She shrugged and waved a dismissive hand. “Because the only sex he’s ever known is more of a transaction than anything? Because he thinks he must do it to keep you?”

Jaskier shook his head until the room blurred dangerously. “I wouldn’t use him that way.”

“You apparently didn’t realize you were.” Yennefer’s lips twisted.

“You’re wrong.”

“I hope so.” The worst part was she sounded like she meant it.

* * *

Jaskier wasn’t in their room when Geralt returned from his hunt. For one horrifying moment, he thought the bard had left, but his lute case and spare clothing were still piled in the corner, so perhaps he’d just moved to a different tavern for his drinking tonight.

Jaskier drank a lot more now than he had before Geralt fucked everything up.

Leaving his armor in a messy trail between the door and the tub, Geralt stripped and climbed into the steaming water. He sank into it with a sigh. For a few blessed moments, as the heat soaked into his skin and released muscles too-long clenched, all he could think about was the blessed warmth of the water’s embrace.

Then his mind turned to Jaskier.

Jaskier, Jaskier, Jaskier. The bard was a black hole in Geralt’s life, drawing all his focus. No matter what he tried, what he offered the bard, it wasn’t enough. The fear stink was always on him, no matter how much Geralt debased himself. He was starting to think he had nothing to offer the bard that would fix what he’d broken. He hated himself for being too weak to stop trying.

Moving gingerly, Geralt washed himself. He had to force himself to be thorough, to wash his sore ass despite the bile that rose in his throat at his own touch.

Ridiculous, weak, stupid to feel that way.

It was a minor hurt, would have healed already if he hadn’t skipped so many meals. He was lucky the bard didn’t want to cause real damage, didn’t want to use knives or whips. Of course, he couldn’t imagine a world where Jaskier, the soft-eyed bard who sang of true love, did want to do those things, but then, he had a hard time recognizing that man in the one who knelt behind him most nights, in what he did and said when their clothes came off.

The talking was honestly the worst. Jaskier never stopped talking, even when he fucked Geralt; he’d been that way since the beginning.

It was what he said that had changed. He’d finally realized Geralt didn’t deserve any of those praises, the sweet nothings the witcher had never been able to accept anyway. At least now what he said was honest.

Shaking himself physically, as if that would shake off the thoughts, Geralt finished washing and clambered out of the tub. He dried and lay down on his back nude, with the sheets pulled up to his waist. Normally on a night like this, when his thoughts wouldn’t settle enough for sleep, he’d find refuge in meditation. But lately he found no peace even there. 

Geralt was still lying awake four hours later when Jaskier finally returned. He heard the bard’s footsteps in the hall, unusually steady and heavy for this time in the morning. Jaskier stood outside their door long enough that Geralt’s pulse kicked up. By the time Jaskier entered, stripped, and climbed into bed behind him, Geralt couldn’t tell who the sour stink of fear was coming from. 

Jaskier’s hand moved in the dark, settling on Geralt’s sternum. It was strange. Normally he just spouted filth and pushed at Geralt until the witcher was in the position he wanted.

Still, Jaskier was touching him, his fingers flexing, making barely perceptible movements on Geralt’s scarred chest. Geralt knew what came next.

He rolled onto his side, dislodging Jaskier’s hand. Scooting back until his ass made contact with the bard’s crotch, he was surprised to discover the bard still wearing his breeches. He rubbed his ass along his clothed cock anyway and was relieved to feel the bard’s erection grow. Jaskier wanted something from him, even if it was just his ass; he could do this.

Jaskier’s hand landed on Geralt’s shoulder. Geralt flinched way from the unexpected contact, covering the motion by rolling to his knees and dropping his weight onto his forearms.

“Just fuck me, Jaskier,” he said.

“Light a candle first,” Jaskier said. His voice was uncharacteristically flat, but quaking a little, anyone unfamiliar with the bard probably wouldn’t have even noticed.

Geralt fought his instinct to hide in the dark. It didn’t matter, Jaskier already knew he was a whore, he said the words every time they fucked. Geralt lit the candle on the bedside table with a snap of his fingers and dropped his face back into arms.

“Don’t turn your face away,” Jaskier ordered. “Look at me.”

His skin crawled at the thought, but Geralt forced himself to twist his shoulders and tuck his chin so his face was turned towards the bard. He would pass this new test.

Jaskier finally, finally began to behave more predictably, moving around to behind Geralt, and it was a relief to have him sticking to the agreement between them. But instead of spearing him open, he held the globes of Geralt’s ass and pulled them apart, opening him to the air. 

Geralt whimpered as Jaskier’s fingers traced swollen skin. Gods, he hated that sound from his own mouth. He clamped his lips and eyes shut.

“I hurt you,” Jaskier said. His voice was still neutral, still wobbly.

“ ‘S ok,” Geralt grit out. That was part of having sex this way.

“Do you like to be hurt?”

Geralt opened his eyes and scowled at Jaskier. “Kind of question is that?”

“Some people like a little pain during sex, it makes them feel good. The way we’ve been doing this,” Jaskier punctuated his sentence by pushing one finger into him. “You must be one of those people.”

Geralt fought his body. Every muscle had gone tense at the unexpected invasion, his back arching and his face twisting.

“No,” he said, the word torn from him without his permission.

Then the finger and Jaskier were gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow's update may be delayed, work is crazy. SORRY BUT IT'S AN IMPORTANT CHAPTER. I want to make sure it's edited sufficiently.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> J/K, new chapter on time! NEXT chapter may be a day or two late.
> 
> This chapter, my dudes. So much harder to fix people than it is to break them. I've been rewriting it for four days. In the end, I went with pretty much my first draft. Enjoy!

Pain. It was the first strong emotion Jaskier learned to read on Geralt, so much a part of the witcher’s daily countenance that it became as familiar as his golden eyes and his silver hair. Maybe so familiar he stopped seeing it. Or maybe Yennefer was right, and he didn’t want to see it.

Now he read pain in every line of the body before him. No pleasure, guilty or otherwise, and no lust. Just pain and humiliation.

Jaskier threw himself off the bed. He stumbled over to the chamber pot and vomited until there was nothing left in his stomach. Then he vomited more, dry, sobbing heaves that stole his breath. He’d stayed at the tavern until he was marginally sober, but he’d never be sober enough for this. His chest constricted painfully.

He’d been forcing himself on the man he loved.

And Geralt had let him.

The witcher crouched beside him, haphazardly wrapped in the sheet.

“How could you?” Jaskier asked. It was the wrong thing to say, the wrong reaction, and he couldn’t help it.

Geralt’s head snapped back like he’d been struck. “You know what I am.”

“…what?”

“I want something, you want something, I don’t see the problem.”

“Is this what you want? Because I want more than this!!”

Geralt’s face convulsed again. Jaskier longed to reach out and smooth the furrow between his brows, but he didn’t trust himself to touch, didn’t trust Geralt to stop him if he hated it.

The silence stretched. Geralt’s face grew paler by the second, even the frustration seeping out of his expression.

“I want you,” Geralt said, voice dead as his eyes. “But I can’t. Please. I don’t want any new scars.”

Jaskier couldn’t breathe. Geralt’s voiced faded into white noise, the edges of the room disappeared, and his vision darkened.

* * *

Jaskier came back to himself slowly. He was surrounded by sound, bathed in a deep bass voice, and for a long moment, he didn’t know where he was or what had happened.

“Jaskier?” the humming stopped. “Are you with me?”

“Geralt? Are you humming?”

“…hmm.”

Trauma tickled at the edges of his mind, weighing down his limbs with exhaustion and sitting on his chest like a stone, but Jaskier sucked in another breath and ignored it. Geralt was here, now, and that was enough.

Geralt began to hum again. Jaskier concentrated on what he could feel…Geralt’s arms around him, his bare chest beneath Jaskier’s cheek, his chin on Jaskier’s head. He could hear the witcher’s slow slow heart thumping in time to the soft song Geralt was humming, an ancient elven tune no one knew the words for anymore.

“Can I ask yet what happened?” Geralt asked between stanzas. This was not the first of Jaskier’s episodes the witcher had witnessed. Though the last time he’d had a reaction this violent was to a more obvious injury, an open fracture that even Geralt admitted was pretty difficult to look at, and it had been Geralt’s femur.

“Not yet,” Jaskier whispered into his chest. This _was_ the first time Geralt had ever held him just to comfort him, maybe the first time he’d held him at all that didn’t devolve into deeply unsatisfying sex for both of them. 

“What a fucking night,” Jaskier said.

“…wasn’t much fucking last night,” Geralt replied.

Jaskier choked on a surprised laugh. “Gods, that’s not funny.”

“But you’re laughing.”

“I am. It feels good. I missed laughing with you.”

Geralt huffed. “I don’t laugh.”

The room lightened around them as dawn broke. Jaskier couldn’t see much from his position balled up in Geralt’s arms, but as the scars on the witcher’s chest began to take on definition, Jaskier sighed.

“We need to talk,” Jaskier said.

The witcher had been rocking them both gently back and forth, but he stilled. “You want more.”

Jaskier pushed himself off Geralt’s chest a bit and glared at him. “Not more violent sex! Sweet Melitele, Geralt. I…forced myself on you! You let me force myself on you!”

Geralt snorted. “That wasn’t rape.”

“Gods, he said the word,” Jaskier tucked himself back under Geralt’s chin with a shudder. “I wish that didn’t sound like experience talking.”

“It’s in the definition, Jaskier. You can’t _let_ someone rape you. They just do.”

“How do you understand that, and not understand that what we’ve been doing is wrong?”

Geralt rubbed his cheek on the top of Jaskier’s head and gave him a little squeeze. Then his arms unwound from Jaskier. He found himself shuffled off the witcher’s lap as the man turned away from him and moved to sit on the edge of the bed.

Acting on instinct, Jaskier pressed his fingertips to the center of Geralt’s back, right between his shoulder blades, holding him in place with those four tiny points of contact.

“Please don’t leave me, Geralt. If you need time or space or, I don’t know, a bottle of white gull, fine! But I need to know I haven’t—”

“You haven’t. You didn’t force me.” Geralt had put on his breeches at some point last night, but he was shirtless, individual muscles on his back standing out as if they were carved. “I thought you wanted…I don’t know. Fuck.”

“Yeah, that about sums it up. Can I ask you a question?”

“Can I say no?”

It was probably a pitiful attempt at a joke on Geralt’s part, but Jaskier couldn’t let it slide. “You can always say no. I thought you knew that. _You should know that_.”

“Hmm. Just ask your question, bard.”

“Why are we having sex, Geralt?” Jaskier asked, and gods, he wished he’d thought to ask years ago.

“We aren’t,” Geralt pointed out.

“Obviously not right now, but…”

“We don’t have sex. You fuck me.”

Jaskier cringed. He pulled his fingers from Geralt’s skin as if burned, leaning back on the headboard and thumbing at his sternum. After sitting like a stone for an agonizing minute, Geralt shoved himself up beside Jaskier. One leg was hanging off the bed, foot flat on the floor as if he were ready to leap away at a moment’s notice, but he pressed their shoulders together.

Geralt pinched Jaskier’s arm gently. “Don’t lose your shit,” he said, before breathing deeply and deliberately.

Jaskier couldn’t help his snort, but he concentrated on breathing in time to the bellows of Geralt’s lungs until the panic receded.

“Why am I fucking you, Geralt?” Jaskier forced himself to ask. All the words tasted bitter on his tongue.

“You want to?” he asked, as if it was obvious. “I can smell it. So when I owe you for something, you fuck me. Like when I’m short of coin and you share your room, you fuck me. That time you rescued me, you fucked me. When you get hurt for me, or, or if I hurt you, you fuck—”

“For Melitele’s sake, stop saying ‘fuck’!”

Geralt stopped talking entirely, which really, was pretty much what Jaskier should have expected.

Softening his tone, Jaskier said, “I help you because I care about you. You owe me nothing. If I ever said otherwise, I was teasing. I don’t want you to have sex with me because you think you must; I definitely, emphatically don’t want to trade pain for pain.”

“I don’t understand. You know what I am.”

“Yes, you’re a witcher and the best man I’ve ever known. What has that got to do with price of nuts in Novigrad?”

“Coin for a service, that’s my whole life. A fuck is on the menu when I have nothing else to bargain with, like any other whore. You know this. You’ve said it yourself.”

Jaskier swallowed down bile. He really didn’t want to make another run for the chamber pot. He could tell the silence had stretched too long when Geralt began to go tense beside him.

“Geralt, the name calling and dirty talk during sex. It’s like the pain thing. I don’t believe those things I said about you, not even a little. It makes me sick to think you did.”

“You thought I liked it.” A patented Geralt question, completely without inflection, delivered with enough side eye for Jaskier to feel dissected.

“Some people do. Some people say stuff like that, do stuff like that, to turn their partners on.”

“I’ve heard. Never been my experience.”

And that was the crux of the problem Yennefer had been trying to warn Jaskier about. Most people didn’t treat Geralt like a person in bed any more than they did in life.

“Ugh, Yen was right about all of this.” Jaskier said with a dramatic sigh.

“You and Yen are talking about sex now?” Geralt looked like he’d be less surprised to find Roach had struck up a conversation with Jaskier about nightwraiths. 

“Eew, no we are never talking about sex again. But apparently she did have a point.”

“She does that sometimes,” Geralt admitted absently.

“Inconvenient. It was easier to hate her blindly.”

Geralt’s body was tense beside him, his eyes flitting around the room. Jaskier could practically hear him thinking. He waited.

Sunlight spilled over the windowsill, splashing orange-gold light across the bed. In the not-quite-comfortable silence between then, Jaskier could hear signs of life from the tavern below, the world just outside the room ready to intrude.

“All this,” Geralt started abruptly, with a gesture that encompassed their half-dressed state, the sheets on the floor, the chamber pot in the corner. “Was you, upset about doing something I didn’t like, something you think I didn’t have to do.”

“Upset. Was I upset? I am disgusted with myself for causing you severe emotional and physical pain, a bit peeved with you for not stopping me, and absolutely raging at the cruelty of a world that made you believe you had to do it!”

“Just a bit of puffy skin, Jaskier. It’ll be gone by tomorrow.”

Jaskier pinched the bridge of his nose. “Alright, let me make a few things explicitly clear. Number one: you owe me nothing, least of all sex.”

“This going to be a numbered list? Should I take notes?”

“Shut up. Yes, take notes. I will tattoo it on my forehead if it helps: this is not a quid pro quo relationship. Ok. Uh. Point B: I will not let you hurt me, do not, do NOT let me hurt you. I’m sure we’ll both cock it up sometimes, but not willfully, not deliberately.”

Geralt nodded, wearing an expression Jaskier had seen on a hundred hunts, observations slotting together behind a neutral mask. “Makes sense. You’re kind of shit at dealing with pain.”

“…he says, like it’s a bad thing. And thirdly: you do not have to do sex stuff you don’t want to do, especially with me.”

“Hmm.”

“No. Not ‘hmm’. Ask yourself, ‘What would Jaskier do in this situation?’ And if the answer is ‘Treat himself like trash’, you don’t know me as well as I thought you did.”

“You would do what you had to do,” Geralt said. The little half smile said he meant it as a compliment.

Jaskier cleared his throat and blinked away tears. “Yeah, probably, if I had no other choice. But you have the choice, with me, to do what you want and only what you want. And if it’s not with me, well, that’s ok too. You owe me nothing.”

“That was number one, or point a, or whatever. You’re repeating them.”

“They’re worth repeating, until you understand.”

“I understand,” Geralt said.

Jaskier drew back to study Geralt’s blank, putting-things-together face. “I don’t think you do, but you know, it’s a process.”

Geralt snorted. “Ok.”

“Ok? That’s it?”

“Last night fucking sucked. So, yeah. Let’s not do that again.”

Jaskier laughed. “Succinct. You’re a poet, witcher mine.”

Geralt poked him in the sternum and narrowed his eyes. “I do not want to do that again, to be the cause of all that…”

“Pain? You don’t want to cause me pain? You can, perhaps, perchance, with a bit of imagination, see why I am upset?”

“Subtle.”

“You know you love it.”

“…maybe.”

Jaskier’s breath caught. Geralt smiled, and Jaskier feel a bit more in love with him at the expression, really just a deep-cornered frown lightened by the laugh lines wreathing his golden eyes. He melted into Jaskier, his body relaxing one muscle at a time, like he was shedding invisible armor, until he had slumped far enough down the headboard to hook his chin on Jaskier’s shoulder.

Jaskier bit his lip and tried hard to just enjoy the contact, to stop talking. Nope, not possible. “So. You do, maybe, want me?”

“Told you last night, I want you.” A bit of confusion crept into his tone. “Or. I don’t know.”

Jaskier considered the witcher, who had stayed by his side when Jaskier’s emotions overwhelmed him, who was now half draped over him like a heavy, sentient blanket, touching him willingly and talking about _feelings_. It broke at least three of his assumptions about what the man would tolerate. “That’s ok. At this point I’m not sure I know what I want either.”

The corners of Geralt’s lips twitched down.

Jaskier sucked in a breath in a rush and willed himself not to be afraid. “I’d like to find out what we want together. Does that sound like a workable arrangement?”

Geralt blinked at him, his face so close to Jaskier’s he could see the tiny amber flecks in his eyes.

“Hmm.”

“Yeah, I’m not taking that for an answer anymore.” Jaskier felt a bit faint.

“Yes, Jaskier,” Geralt said, rolling his eyes. He closed the distance between them and pressed a kiss to the corner of Jaskier’s mouth. “Together. I want that.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly longer chapter than anticipated: loose ends, adult conversations, a tiny bit more angst and some healthy sexy times. Enjoy!

They camped on a rise at the edge of a wheat field outside Brunwich, close enough to town that the light breeze carried the sounds of laughter and dogs barking. A leafy tree shaded them as afternoon bled into a painted sky sunset, darting swallows and fat, self-satisfied orioles filling the gold-tinged air with a cacophony of music. The blue evening brought a mist of fireflies and silver moonlight to gild the lake below.

In short, it was a beautiful night, even by Geralt’s admittedly undiscerning standards.

Jaskier was miserable.

“Something wrong?” Geralt asked over dinner.

“I’m fine,” Jaskier said with a smile that cracked around the edges.

Geralt knew he had a reputation for being, well, a bit less adept with the human emotional range than most people. He had carefully cultivated that reputation.

But he wasn’t a godsdamned rock troll. He knew Jaskier was sad, would have known even if Jaskier hadn’t restarted the same tragic ballad three times because his voice broke, even if he hadn’t eaten four days’ worth of his favorite stuffed rolls in one sitting.

“You’re staring,” Jaskier said, sadly. Because he did everything sadly now.

“Yes,” Geralt said. Because he wasn’t allowed to ‘hmm’ now. “You’re sad.”

Jaskier frowned at him, then visibly swallowed a sigh. “I’m fine.”

Geralt shook his head at the blatant lie and dug his whetstone out. To give himself something to do, he began to sharpen his arsenal of ‘stabby and slashy things,’ as Jaskier had once put it.

Jaskier’s words had a way of taking root in Geralt’s mind and throwing out creepers.

The bard sat on the other side of the fire, cross-legged with his lute in his lap like a child with a comfort toy, not playing it, just running his fingers over the carvings. Chin propped on one fist, he alternated between staring into the fire and pretending not to look at Geralt.

Geralt cleared his throat. “Stop being sad.”

Jaskier huffed. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“This still about the bad sex stuff?”

“No,” Jaskier said, but he was looking at Geralt like someone had just murdered Roach.

Geralt examined his silver blade closely, so he wouldn’t have to look at Jaskier. “Carsten has a drowner problem. They're drinking runoff from a vodka distillery.”

“Drunk drowners. I can’t decide if that’s horrifying or hilarious. Why bring it up?”

“Killing stuff always makes me feel better.”

Jaskier gaped at him. “Are you offering to chaperone me on a drowner hunt? Lend me your sword and let me go mad on a bunch of monsters too drunk to put up a fight?”

Geralt shrugged and flashed Jaskier a bit of teeth.

Jaskier burst out laughing. “Oh my gods, I can picture it. Me in my purple hose, swinging your sword like a woodcutter on fisstech, drowner limbs and heads flying. That’s the either best or the worst idea I’ve ever…oh, you did that on purpose you sneaky little shit.”

“Never had any complaints about size.”

“Was that flirting? Are you flirting right now?”

Geralt grinned at him, but Jaskier’s fragile little smile wilted. A heavy silence fell around the campfire. Only one thing to do, then.

“Talk about it,” Geralt told his sword blade.

“You hate talking about this kind of thing.”

“I’m not talking. You are. You do that all the time. Sometimes I don’t complain about it.”

Jaskier laughed, but it was a sad, defeated sound. “For perhaps the first time in my long life,” he ignored Geralt’s raised brows, “I think I truly hate myself, I am utterly and completely disgusted by what I did to you. It was the worst betrayal of trust I can conceive. I’m so sorry.”

Geralt could think of at least five worse betrayals he’d suffered at other hands, but that wasn’t the point. “You didn’t know.”

“Years Geralt, I was hurting you for years. You’re the person I want to hurt least in this whole miserable, mealy world, and I tortured you, emotionally and physically.”

“You saved my life, made it more comfortable and less. Lonely. For years.” Ugh. Feelings.

“I’m glad, I am. But at what cost?”

“Thought we weren’t trading pain for pain.”

“I…what?”

“I don’t want to trade this pain, your pain now, for any of my past pain.”

Jaskier’s mouth opened and closed several times soundlessly.

Geralt smirked.

“Alright, fine. Go ahead and gloat. I’ll allow it.” Jaskier leaned back on his hands and smiled at him, and Geralt was no poet, but he’d never seen a sunrise brighter than Jaskier’s face-cracking smile. “You just won an argument. With words!”

“Shut up,” Geralt said without heat.

For the first time since The Talk, they rolled out their bedrolls side by side, with Jaskier safe between Geralt’s back and the fire.

* * *

The wild boar’s head landed at Jaskier’s feet with a wet splat.

“What in the spheres?”

Geralt danced in widening circles around him, felling boars and snarling, fighting off a pack of the animals that had descended on them so quickly Jaskier hadn’t even noticed until most of them had already fallen to Geralt’s sword.

“Wow,” he told the disembodied head at his feet. “That escalated.”

“Gotta watch for boar around here,” Geralt said. He wiped his blade on his trousers like the wild man he was and threaded around the enormous boar carcasses to get back to Jaskier.

“Did I just almost die?” Jaskier asked him.

“…only a little.”

“You can’t die ‘a little’, Geralt. You saved my life.”

Whistling for Roach, Geralt ignored him. He knew where Jaskier was going with this, it was nowhere near the first time they’d had this discussion.

“What do I owe you?” Jaskier asked, bowing with a flourish. “Perhaps, I might offer myself for menial, debasing services?”

Roach emerged from the thick woods alongside the road like a wraith materializing.

“You’ve made your point,” Geralt said as he swung himself back into the saddle.

“Have I though? Do you understand why I was horrified you thought yourself in debt to me?” Jaskier took his place at Geralt’s left stirrup as they resumed their amble down the narrow road.

When it became clear that Geralt didn’t intend answer, Jaskier poked his calf. “Ok, listen. Your child surprise. She must be what, 11 or 12 now?”

Geralt shrugged his armored shoulders with a clank.

“Liar, you know exactly how old she is. Anyway, if she came to you and said, ‘Mysterious father figure, there’s someone I want more than anything, but to be with them I must allow them to hurt me in ways I hate,’ what would you say?”

“I’d say, you’re eleven and I’ll stick my sword through anyone who tries.”

“Yes, yes you would.” Jaskier pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine, 10 years from now.”

“I’d—”

“Ten years from now AND you’re not around with a sword. What would you have her do?”

Geralt growled.

“Do you see my point? I cannot put a value on your life, I hate to see you devalue it so casually.”

“Ok.” He didn’t sound convinced.

“Geralt—”

Geralt kicked Roach into a gallop in a spray of dirt clods, putting an end to the conversation by putting distance between them. But when Jaskier broke out of the woods ten minutes later, Geralt was sitting on a low wall beneath the crossroads sign, letting Roach chew on his hair. Which was so adorable it should be illegal, and also a bit gross. Typical Geralt.

“I don’t think I’ll ever see the world the way you do,” Geralt said without preamble. “But I am trying.”

Jaskier swallowed hard a couple of times. “That’s all I can ask.”

* * *

Geralt woke slowly, easing out of dreams of Jaskier so gradually he couldn’t tell where the fantasy ended and reality began. He was laying on his side on a pile of silky furs in his winter quarters at Kaer Morhen. The comforting smell of home surrounded him, tanned hide and chamomile and rosin.

He shifted minutely and Jaskier protested from behind him. As usual, they’d gone to bed side by side, but the bard had curled around him in the night, his knees slotted in behind Geralt’s, his arms hugging Geralt tight around the waist. Their bodies pressed together in a line of from Jaskier’s forehead on Geralt’s nape to their tangled legs, broken only by the thin fabric of their underthings.

The dim light seeping beneath the door suggested it was early morning, and the hard line of Jaskier’s erection against Geralt’s ass suggested the sleeping bard was about to have a morning sort of problem.

They hadn’t done any sex stuff since The Talk. Which was fine, Geralt hadn’t known what he wanted and Jaskier seemed more traumatized than Geralt. If he needed any additional incentive to keep their genitalia out the relationship, the fact that any whiff of arousal from Jaskier was followed immediately by fear-stink sealed the deal.

Which made the present predicament problematic.

Geralt tried to scoot away from Jaskier a little bit, to put some space between their hips before the bard woke up horrified.

Jaskier squeezed Geralt tighter. He wiggled around, bumping his clothed dick against Geralt a bit more, and mumbled something that sounded a lot like “Mine.”

It felt nice. All of it. Being held, belonging, hell, even Jaskier’s dick against him.

Geralt was laying very still, trying to decide what to do with that information when Jaskier’s arms turned to bands around him and his breath stuttered. Geralt shut his eyes and held his breath.

“Shit. I’m so sorry,” Jaskier said. He pulled back so fast his nails scraped tracks across Geralt’s belly.

“You were asleep,” Geralt told him. His voice sounded strange in his own ears, nasally and flat.

“Yeah. Yeah, I was. I’ll just…” Jaskier scooted away from Geralt, until he couldn’t even feel the heat radiating off his body.

Geralt couldn’t cry, his mutated body didn’t know how, but he wanted to. Thankfully, the part of his brain that wasn’t keening had apparently learned something from all the shit they’d been through.

“I can smell fear,” Geralt announced.

Jaskier startled behind him. “Ok? Sounds useful, I guess.”

“Thought you should know.”

“O-kay. Uh. Thanks?”

Geralt grunted. Gods, he was shit at this words stuff. The silence stretched while he wrestled with the question he wanted to ask.

Thank fuck the bard could read his silences. “I’m not scared of you,” Jaskier said.

“You always reek of fear when you touch me like that, you did even before everything went to shit.”

Jaskier’s fingers came to rest between Geralt’s shoulder blades, that magical tethering point he’d discovered last time they’d been skin to skin. “Dear heart, I’m not afraid of you. I was afraid of doing something you wouldn’t like. Which I was doing the whole time, but. Ugh. I was afraid of driving you away.”

“I’m difficult to drive away,” Geralt said. He forced himself to relax, to unclench his muscles before Jaskier noticed he was shaking.

“Whenever I tried to reciprocate, you flinched, you weren’t, uh...”

“Hard.”

“Have I mentioned lately that I appreciate your direct communication style, once you’ve been levered into speaking?”

Geralt shook his head.

“Right, well. It’s very concise. Pithy. So yeah, I’d pretty well convinced myself you didn’t even, er...”

“Get hard.”

Jaskier sputtered. “Yes, that; gods you’re shameless. I love it.”

Geralt hid a smile in his pillow. Getting Jaskier flustered was quickly becoming one of his favorite pasttimes.

“You do want to touch me?” Geralt asked. He looked over his shoulder at the bard lying behind him, his body a smaller, harrier S curve to match Geralt’s.

“Very much,” Jaskier whispered. His eyes were wide in the dim light.

Geralt took Jaskier’s hands, laced their fingers together, and tugged him into the position they woke up in, nestling back against Jaskier with a sigh like a man coming home.

They lay that for a long time, the heat in Geralt’s belly growing pleasantly. His voice was rough when he finally spoke again. “I can show you what I want, but if you don’t want to…”

“I won’t do anything I don’t want to do,” Jaskier promised, his breath tickling Geralt’s neck.

Geralt nodded. Biting his lip, he drummed his fingers on his stomach and gathered his courage.

Finally, achingly slowly, he dragged one hand, fingers still tangled with Jaskier’s, up his own belly to his chest. He tweaked his nipple, teasing and running his callused fingers over it, Jaskier’s trapped fingers following, fluttering, just barely touching in an echo of Geralt’s movements. He did the same with his other hand, moving their fingers down under his smalls to trace the soft skin between his own thigh and hip, skirting his dick to trace deeper between his legs. For better access, he hooked his top leg up over Jaskier’s, spreading himself on the bard’s body. Jaskier’s fingers twitched in his hold, pressing into the space behind his balls. He cupped Jaskier’s hand around them and gave the barest of squeezes.

“Slow,” he gasped out, throwing his head back and arching his neck.

“Can I kiss you here?” Jaskier breathed against his pulse point.

Geralt nodded again, then hummed in pleasure at the feel of Jaskier’s lips on his neck, the texture of his tongue on the soft skin below his jaw. Geralt moved their tangled hands to his dick, pulling it out of his underclothing, but not squeezing or stroking as he adjusted to the touch.

“Hard,” Jaskier said with a wicked grin Geralt could hear. 

Geralt whuffed out a little laugh even as he arched into Jaskier’s slack hold. “Soft, soft.”

“You’re sensitive here too.” It was less a question and more of a pained realization.

He looked back over his shoulder at Jaskier, straining until he could land an uncoordinated kiss on his lips. “You didn’t know. Gets easier, just gotta adjust.”

Jaskier pressed their foreheads together. “You like it though?”

Geralt ran their fingers lightly up and down his dick with a moan. “Yes.”

The hand on his chest moved, Jaskier sliding their tangled fingers to Geralt’s other nipple. “Soft,” the bard said has he teased the bud of flesh. He tugged Geralt’s earlobe into his mouth and sucked gently.

“Ok?” he breathed into Geralt’s ear as his tongue lathed it.

“Yes,” Geralt said, though the word came nowhere near capturing how good it felt. He tightened their slack fingers on his dick and stroked it once from root to head.

“Do you have oil?” Jaskier asked. “It would surely make this easier on your sensitive skin.”

“Don’t want to get up,” Geralt admitted with another featherlight stroke. “Bedside table.”

Jaskier gave his hands a squeeze and disentangled them. He leaned over Geralt to reach the table, resting his whole weight on the witcher’s back and pressing his body, his bare dick, into the soft furs. Jaskier’s cock was a hard line between Geralt’s clothed cheeks.

Geralt exhaled hard as another bolt of arousal shot through him. His hips twitched involuntarily.

“Shit,” Jaskier said. “Sorry! Should have thought that through, I wasn’t trying to hold you down, or restrain you, or…”

“I’m fine Jaskier.” Geralt rolled onto his back beneath Jaskier and cupped his hand on the bard’s chin. He couldn’t quite admit it to Jaskier’s face, so he directed his words to the point just off to the right of the bard’s shoulder. “Feels good to be held, covered.”

“Yeah?” Jaskier asked, and they both ignored the tremor in his voice. “We can keep going?”

“Yes,” Geralt said with as much force as he could muster while weakly twitching under Jaskier’s body. He rolled back onto his side and then sighed as Jaskier curled around him again, his oil covered hands returning to his chest and dick. Geralt cupped his own hands over Jaskier’s but let the bard lead as he teased and tweaked, stroked and gripped.

“Can I try something?” Jaskier asked. “Just say, I don’t know…warg…if you want me to stop.”

Geralt, strung out and quivering, nodded against Jaskier.

“Move your top leg up, that’s it,” Jaskier said, pushing Geralt over a little more onto his belly. He still had plenty of space to work, but now his entire body was draped over Geralt, grounding him.

“ ‘s good, Jaskier,” Geralt breathed out. “ ‘m close.” He writhed slowly against Jaskier, his body lighting up everywhere skin touched skin, a thousand points of not-pain, of pleasure all over him.

Jaskier’s hips twitched on Geralt’s ass. He groaned into Geralt’s hair.

“Can I?” he asked, begged.

“Yes, want you to,” Geralt said, craving that extra point of contact between them, though he resisted the urge to grind back into it. That would be too like their disastrous couplings up to this point, and he wanted that nowhere near this night.

Jaskier rolled his hips against Geralt, rutting like a boy in his smalls. His hands on the witcher never faltered, pace increasing incrementally, grip just on the right side of too much.

“I’m close, Ger,” Jaskier whispered, and the new nickname twisted something deep inside Geralt. “Come for me love, please.”

Geralt’s orgasm ripped through him, his back bowing and his body shuddering as he spent. Jaskier followed a moment later, groaning like a dying man as his hips stuttered against Geralt.

They lay panting together, skin to skin, until Jaskier shivered. They’d kicked aside the coverings at some point, and though Jaskier’s clever use of Geralt’s discarded underclothes had saved the furs, the bard’s own sticky underthings had to be growing uncomfortable.

“Just gonna wipe down and change, ok?” Jaskier asked.

Geralt grunted. Rules about verbosity aside, a grunt was about all he could manage at the moment. He whined at the loss of Jaskier at his back immediately, eliciting a pleased chuckle from the bard.

Jaskier didn’t dawdle in the crisp air of their room, quickly rejoining Geralt in bed. They lay on their backs beside each other, and Geralt listened as Jaskier sucked in several breaths and let them out in sighs, each an aborted attempt to ask a question he could see twisting Jaskier’s face.

“ ‘mere,” Geralt said softly.

With another speaking sigh, Jaskier flopped himself down on Geralt’s chest, pillowing his head over the witcher’s heart.

“That was lovely,” Jaskier said. “For me anyway, I hope it was for you as well.”

“Mmm. Yes. But?”

“No buts! Well, at least one gorgeous butt. But…”

“That’s two buts.”

“Geralt, I could do that with you every day for the rest of our lives, if that's enough for you. But I would give you so much more, if you wanted.” The last bit was said in a shy whisper into Geralt's chest that made his stomach swoop. 

“Enough, for now.” Geralt kissed the top of Jaskier's shaggy head. “ _But_ I might want more tomorrow.”

Jaskier groaned. “Do you ever stop with the terrible puns or sarcastic interjections?”

“You love it.”

“I do love it. I really do.”

Geralt tucked Jaskier under his chin. “And I, you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all she wrote, folks! Thanks again for all your support, the kudos, the comments. This was a tough fic to write and it was even harder to share it, but I'm glad I did. Sometimes you just gotta write 16k words abut respecting yourself and the people you love enough to communicate. Sadly, lots of folks can relate.


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